


This new thing, which consumes

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-23
Updated: 2004-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:47:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is as she was made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This new thing, which consumes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for prozacpark

 

 

It starts with the flowers, always.

Filling the corners of her quarters -- she has been discouraged, repeatedly, from thinking of it as a cell -- and slowly creeping toward her, wherever she may be at the time.

(Anywhere but the bed.)

The flowers themselves spring from vines which remind her in multiple improper ways of her mother, but when she thinks this -- there.

The vines blacken there and whiten there, shifting into coils of dark and grey and the bleach of bone. It is a reminder -- as if she could need one -- that she's in the Kingdom of the Dead, now, and no other.

The flowers begin to shift after a moment, as they always do. Narcissus reaches for her with his petals, blood drips, flows.

Narcissus screams.

It is always the same, and she is not impressed.

*

When she rises, the doors open, creaking and -- yes, reaching. She allows her tunic to be caught by hands of wood -- no, bone, no, muscle, no -- and lets the rip of fabric echo as she passes.

It announces her better than the footmen she had been offered and, of course, refused.

She has her own servants, above, and they grow strange and deceitful when given reason to be jealous.

It does not matter that the girls have undoubtedly been weeping and rending their flesh and clothing in her absence -- there are always protocols.

The scrap of tunic flashes with life behind her and to the side, flaring and flapping with the wings of a bird before settling at her side. The shreds of the weave form and reform a dozen faces before stopping on features which are entirely unsurprising.

"Kore," he says, in the voice of stones and weaving.

She walks on.

*

Tantalus lures her, as he would, perhaps, lure any visitor to this place. He is, at all times, surrounded by the perfume of delicious meats and clouds of the best wines. Though 'ghosts' would, perhaps, be the better term -- however irritatingly literal.

She remembers the vintage well, after all. It had been too sweet for Dionysus' tastes, and he'd made a gift of it to her mother.

A boar vomits a selection of olives and pine nuts just beyond Tantalus' reach and snorts at her.

She raises an eyebrow.

"We are, here, beyond illusion, and beyond the pettier arts," it says, in the voice of stones and squealing.

"You are savage," she says, and turns away.

She toys with Tantalus, letting her fingers dance just beyond his ability to snap until the boar's mouth is filled with little things again, and she is as alone as she can be.

*

For dinner, she allows her tunic to repair itself. Such is the barest minimum of courtesy.

Judging by the look in her host's eyes, the act is both unappreciated and the absolute maximum of what she must do as a... guest.

The courses come and go, an unvaried and unlovely selection of withered fruits and rotting meats. The flies dance around her hair, lazy and fat.

"You are a daughter of the Spring," Hades says, in a voice of stones alone.

She meets his eyes, as is expected.

"There are many beasts which prey on other beasts. And on men. In the spring."

Listening to him speak is quite like watching food fall out of the mouth of a drunkard or a corpse; plop, plop, plop.

"At such times, there is death. All around you. And then there are... the flowers."

On cue, black vines toy and tickle at her ankles, questing at her for permission to twine. She remains still.

"I am only what I am," offers her host.

"Yes?"

"Kore," he says. "I beg."

She wrinkles her nose, and waits to be excused.

*

Among the Danaids, she feels... uncomfortably comfortable. They are, at best, provincial sorts, but they welcome her visits as her own ladies were wont to do. They raise hails, and splash at her with the water they must carry, and carry again.

"At least we are together," the one with the broad hips says, for perhaps the hundredth time since Kore has been here.

"Just so. Though where is Father?" asks the one whose curls tumble all the way down her spine.

"Where," they echo. "Where?"

"Fathers are sacrosanct," she says, because she can, and it is true.

"Unfair," says the one whose hands are always bloody.

"Just so," Kore says, and beckons her out of the line.

She comes, skipping, and kneels at Kore's feet. "Mistress?"

Kore catches the girl's hands between her own, and turns them this way and that. "How came you by this?"

The girl frowns. "My husband came late to our marriage bed, stinking of wine and the fires. Stinking of other things -- he had not bathed!"

Kore clucks her tongue. "And then?"

"My dagger was sharp, and my husband slept deeply," the girl says, and shrugs. "I saw no crime in making him bleed as he had done to me."

"You were brutal."

"I am my *father's* daughter," the girl says, solid and true with defiance.

"Perhaps," Kore says, and releases her. The girl offers her hair for Kore to wipe the blood away.

*

The dog barks at her, and licks at her toes, and watches for others Kore may be shielding from view.

There is no one behind her, of course, but such was how the hound was made. Kore waits, impatiently. The summoning had been explicit, momentarily sweetening her swampy bath with something like home.

However, it is not unlike Aphrodite to be less than punctual. Her sister/aunt is not much older than she, save when she is, and shows it.

Such was how she was made.

Kore bids the hound to settle and rests against its flank as she waits, pulling the inevitable tangles and bone spurs from its fur and dozing to its growls and sighs.

A few souls slip past them as she waits, and the stone rumbles and complains beneath her.

This, too, is restful.

Finally, the world brightens and sweetens, and the hound loses the ability to rest quiet beneath her. It stinks of maleness and excitement, and Aphrodite descends.

"Little sister," she says, and gathers Kore to her, stroking her thighs much as she'd stroked the dogs.

"You wished me?"

Aphrodite's mouth curls teasingly, and the hound whimpers. This catches Aphrodite's attention, of course. "Pitiful beast. Have you no bitch to warm you?"

Kore frowns. "It would not know whether to mount or snap, aunt."

"So *many* little tragedies in this place," Aphrodite says, and when she shivers, the many folds of her hemation slip below the blushing rounds of her shoulders, baring one breast.

Kore swallows back the inevitable saliva and waits.

Aphrodite seems content to scratch at the hound's ears and croon soft moans of approval. Such is often the case however, and the hound only ejaculates four times before losing consciousness.

Surprising, really. It had seemed far sturdier.

Aphrodite hums and shakes her head. "It is unused to such things. An old man who has had many wives, now..." She shrugs, lightly, and sits on the hound's gently heaving ribs. "It may kill him, but he will be *with* you until the very end."

"As you say, aunt."

The pout is soft and devastating. "Sister."

Kore bows her head. "Sister."

Aphrodite nods sharply. "You were wondering about the nature of my visit, yes?"

Kore nods.

"Perhaps you thought me here to free you?" Another teasing smile, and she strokes the hound idly.

It whimpers and growls in its sleep.

"I had hopes," Kore says, and lets the emphasis remain gentle, so as not to receive the pout.

As opposed to the giggle. "Oh, it's *not* time for that, little sister, little maiden."

"You have... consulted with Apollo's creature?"

This giggle is powerful enough that only the fact that she's seated allows Aphrodite's hemation to remain on her body. The curls above her pubis shine to make a moneylender collapse, and her breasts jiggle and shake and tempt.

It takes all of Kore's strength not to stroke herself, and she cannot, precisely, remember why she's trying.

"Oh, you *maidens*. You remind me that it has been too long since I've visited with our sister Artemis."

"Does she not have a habit of shooting at you, sister?"

Aphrodite waves a hand, and Kore manages -- barely -- not to step into its path. Aphrodite smiles, and tosses her hair. "In any event, your mother should have told you that those of us with... *specific* dominions do not always need Apollo's creatures to know the paths of those around us."

Kore shifts around the wetness of her thighs, and wills her tunic longer. "And so my fate is bound with... sex?"

"You should request a boon, little sister," Aphrodite says, and digs her nails into the hound's sides.

"I..."

"You should be positively *aching* for one, I believe."

She wants no such thing. Not from *her*. "Sister, please. What of my mother?"

Aphrodite's impression of sadness and sympathy leaves much to be desired, and the stone beneath them rumbles and cracks itself into sharp, reaching points and curves and... other shapes.

Kore makes a face, and turns away from the sight of Aphrodite using two such shapes to rise, curling her fists and *stroking*.

"Oh, be *generous*, little sister! Such acts will be beyond the bounds of familial politesse, soon enough."

"I will *not* submit, sister. Not to..."

Aphrodite wraps her arms around Kore's neck, and nudges her hips against Kore's home in gentle, rhythmic suggestion. "Not to anyone, little sister?" She leans in, and licks at the tip of Kore's nose. "At least you have an excuse. At least this is how you were made."

"Yes," Kore says, nodding and struggling to struggle. "Yes, exactly. I am *Kore*."

"And I am Aphrodite, and I say to you that the worlds above will not have you until you are something else entire, sweet sister." Her breath is spiced, like the fruits above Tantalus.

Her body is soft, and her tongue... her tongue...

"Ask."

It is a command, and Aphrodite is the elder. "I... I ask. For a boon."

The kiss is slick, horrifying, *invasive*.

And then it isn't.

*

When she wakes, her tunic has lengthened and darkened to a rich violet Dionysus would appreciate. The peplos is heavy -- the whole of her outfit is -- but it helps everything sit correctly.

"I look like my mother," she thinks, but it isn't at all the case.

Even when she concentrates, she cannot make the patterns on her hems form anything like flowers or vines, or even fruits.

The shapes remain nebulous -- and not as strange as, perhaps, they should be.

The hound makes a questioning sound.

When she raises an eyebrow in reflex, it quiets itself, and kneels, and bows its shaggy heads.

So.

As she walks, the stone is still beneath her feet, and the whole of the realm is hushed. Even the Danaids are silent, only returning to their chatter when she gestures impatiently.

That...

Yes. That seems the right word for this, for all of her. *Impatient*.

She pauses before Ixion's burning little wheel, and breathes the man's sweat and pain and frustration until it is a part of her own voice:

"Hades. Come to me."

He rises from the stone with rumbling dignity beside her, shaggy and dusty as the hound, large as the souls he holds.

"My abductor."

He blinks at her slowly, pebbles falling from his lashes to patter at his feet. "Kore --"

"No," she says, and, abruptly, the sense of it all comes to her. "No," she says again, more firmly, and reaches up to snag his beard with his fingers. As she pulls, it falls in the clean, thick waves she far prefers. Hades grunts, confused and male and hers.

"I am Persephone," she says, "and you will be as I will make you."

"My Queen," he whispers, and his voice is stone and flame.

*

Hermes is swift in many ways, and takes in the whole of things with a flickering glance. Still, there are formalities.

While he watches, while her realm watches, Persephone plucks the desiccated seeds from the bowl at her side, rolling them between her fingers until they are red and vivid once more before settling them on her tongue, one by one by one.

Her throne shifts and melts and reaches hungrily, probing between her buttocks and curling round her throat until she *looks* at her husband.

The throne subsides... save for those parts of itself rendered invisible to her subjects by her own body.

Hermes is also incapable of patience, and does not allow her to finish her pomegranate. "Sister --"

"Yes, brother?"

"The world of men *does* suffer in your absence."

Her throne rumbles beneath and beside her -- wonderfully so. The realm around them remains, for the most part, calm. Hades cannot deny that they have received many new subjects since she has come.

Her peplos shifts and hardens, becoming as brittle as dead tree limbs, and Persephone sighs.

"Tell mother I'll be home soon."

Hermes raises an eyebrow.

"For a visit," she says, and the arms of her throne soften, and curl around her, and please.

end.

Kore: Greek for 'maiden.'   
Persephone: Greek for 'dazzling brilliance,' or 'she who steals the light.'

 


End file.
